Sam Smith BHS Visit Report 2024
BHS visit to Samuel Smiths Old Brewery, Tadcaster: 26 June 2024
Report by Jeff Sechiari
We were delighted to be invited to visit Samuel Smith's Old Brewery in June. Like the proverbial buses, after waiting years to visit Yorkshire we were back again just a few weeks after the AGM gathering. Tadcaster famously is home to three major breweries, the adjacent buildings of Samuel Smith and John Smith with their towers and chimney stacks dominating the central townscape, and the more modern former Bass Tower Brewery on the edge of town.
Our visit followed last year's invitation to visit Samuel Smith's Stamford Brewery: the former Melbourn Brothers' All Saints Brewery where Samuel Smith brews its fruit beer, another very special day in the BHS calendar.
The story of the coming of the two adjacent breweries in Tadcaster is well known so I will go straight into our visit report, ably supported by a glass of very tasty Taddy Porter. We gathered in the brewery car park on the morning of June 26th and were met by our hosts Head Brewer Gavin Scoreby and brewer Mick Burton with each taking half of the party on tour, heading off in different directions.
My group was with Mick and we started in the stables where three magnificent grey, but strikingly white, shire horses were waiting to greet us. One, brought out to meet us by Simon Crook, seemed to take a shine to our editor – was it his lilac shirt or perhaps his after shave? The horses enjoy a shower and the second group witnessed one being hosed down in the sunshine. We were all surprised by the weight of the beautiful harnesses, both the working and show versions. We then went on to admire the stunning show drays. The horses are a regular sight in and around town as they deliver to local hostelries. They have a range of about four and a half miles and a pair can pull around four tons. The tack room door featured ancient beams which, it transpired, were discovered when re-plastering the room after the town's major flooding in 2015. In a demonstration of the attention to looking after the historic fabric of the building seen throughout our tour these beams were left on display. Elsewhere where old tile work was found this has been carefully restored even though not in the public domain.
We then moved on the very large and tidy cooperage where we met Ethan Fairweather, the cooper, who gave a very detailed talk through the tools and processes involved in his role. The brewery has a huge stock of wooden casks used for cask Old Brewery Bitter and for maturing their strong ale Yorkshire Stingo.
Whilst most of the site is very historic there are also a number of conical fermenters used for their lagers, keeping the lager yeast well away from the ale brewhouse. We passed the three large boilers - two are coal fired and one oil but all will soon to be converted to gas, on our way to our next port of call, which was the original 85 feet deep well of 1758, still in use today. Close by is a new well used for lager brewing with the water reverse osmosis treated. The well water is highly mineralised, containing natural accumulations of calcium from the limestone rock upon which the brewery sits. This hard well water is unsuitable for brewing lager, hence the need to 'soften' the water for lager.
We then headed to the top of the brewhouse, always a fascinating place with the roof trusses on show and extensive views across rooftops. Here we saw the two Porteus malt mills, one being used just for the organic beers. There are four malt silos for organic malt, six for pale malt and two for crystal. Heading down through the brewery we came to the mash tuns. Two of these date from 1896 while two more, slightly smaller, were added in the 1950s. A 3.6 ton mash will yield 160 barrels of Old Brewery Bitter. It was then on to the three coppers by Robert Morton & Co. coppersmiths and engineers of Burton, with the hop store adjacent.
Late hops are added to the hopback and the wort is then circulated to a pair of vertical copper vessels called dog kennels in a room which also housed an old copper wort receiver, beautifully restored but not usable for safety reasons. This was above an historic open wort cooler in a room whose windows exemplified the desire for style when the brewery was constructed.
Onward to fermentation with a large room containing twelve Yorkshire squares of 80 barrel capacity, fermentation taking four days. Whilst most were busy working away, some springing into life for five minutes rousing the yeast every two hours, there were a couple of empty ones enabling us to see the structure of these vessels with a lower chamber with cooling coils for the wort and another area above this chamber's roof to collect the yeast. Above the squares was a lid that could be moved along from vessel to vessel to seal it, allowing CIP ("Clean-in-Place"). Prior to this installation Mick shared memories of having to get into each square in turn to clean both chambers manually. There were additional smaller rooms of squares off to the side of the main room with a total of 68 squares in five rooms.
Green beer is then transferred to settling tanks for three days before racking and we followed its route to the cellars, with rails heading downwards to guide the casks rolling on their journey. Past the settling tanks, the cellars were now largely empty because higher ambient temperatures these days meaning they were no longer reliably cool enough for storage. They periodically fill 70 casks with Yorkshire Stingo and I think these were the wooden casks that we did see quietly maturing in the cellar.
After the end of a wonderful tour, full of interest, we all adjourned across the bridge to the Royal Oak to enjoy a range of Samuel Smith's beers. Having failed to get the two groups together in the brewery we then took the opportunity for a group photograph before a gradual dispersal, although with many staying on through the afternoon to enjoy beer and conversation on a warm day.
A truly memorable day for which we are very grateful to our hosts and all at the brewery who made us so welcome and informed us well. That evening it remained to explore Tadcaster to see the Tower Brewery, followed by the trail along the former railway line and over the impressive viaduct, then down to the riverside, past the weir and back to the lovely church and the town bridge. By now it was well and truly dusk and a walk around the outside of the two breweries was magical.
Jeff Sechiari